


Something like that

by Ersen



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Cigarettes, Coffee, Multi, Nowhere, One Shot Collection, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ersen/pseuds/Ersen
Summary: "You wanna jump me?".Cigarettes, chips crumbs and a stinking blanket. That's the whole world.





	Something like that

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!  
> So, English is not my native language and ... well. I hope it is okay. You tell me.  
> Also, this is already posted in French on my fanfiction account under the name "Quelque chose comme ça", so yeah, this is a translation of something I wrote in French first.  
> Hope you'll enjoy!

They are absolutely alone, in a strange room with a couch, an ashtray and a gas stove in the corner. The list is exhaustive. And yet, the place is spacious. Nobody knows how they got here: they don’t know, either, how they got here. He must be fourteen, at the most, and her a little younger. His hand is on her merely existing chest, and her lips hold a cigarette.

Looking at them, one could think that everything begins here, that the were born like this, in this very position, that there was never anything before and – maybe – that there would never be anything anymore after. They hear a tune whose erotic lyrics they cannot understand. It is not sure exactly where it comes from. From the street down below, possibly, or the neighbors. Yet the assumptions lack any sense for everything in the atmosphere indicates that they are alone in the world. She speaks.

“Do you wanna jump me?”

He immediately took his hand off her chest, as if it was not him but someone else who had put it there. He looks down, awkwardly fiddling with the hem of his cotton shirt. He’s embarrassed, apparently. That gets to the girls, who starts tapping her foot on the ground. We notice she doesn’t wear any shoe or sock, and, regarding the lighting, we wonder if she’s not cold. It looks like it’s freezing, but that might be an impression. The boy wears but a dirty tank top and washed-out jeans – not those washed-out jeans you pay five hundred bucks to look exactly like that, no, washed-out because you found it in the trash and have washed it fifty times to try and get rid of the smell, failing, but wearing it nonetheless.

“Do you wanna or do you not wanna?”

Saying those words seems easy to her, like it’s not the first time she pronounces them. She doesn’t look like a hooker though, with her man velvet pants and her greenish sweater. The boy doesn’t know it means nothing. He puts his hands in his pockets and one of them finds a potato chip he eats. Se takes a puff off her cigarette.

“Not really … I think.”

She wonders what makes him so uneasy. She has no idea she’s imposing, with her fierce eyes and irritated smug. She’s younger but taller by a mere inch, and he has to look up if he wants to see her face. It’s not on purpose, she didn’t choose. He probably didn’t choose to feel so embarrassed either. You can’t choose yourself, that’s a bummer.

“So it’s settled.

— What is?

— Wheter you wanna jump me or not. Anyway I don’t wanna jump you either. You’re not really my type, if you know what I mean.

— No, I don’t know.”

She looks at him like he’s a dimwit, which is not entirely wrong, and keeps going. She has no idea why, but she feels like talking, using her saliva. Like she’s been keeping herself from talking for centuries. “I don’t like men.”, she says, and really he’s more of a boy.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He want to talk, too, but something’s keeping him.

“You?”, he frowns and she holds her hand towards him. He gives her chips crumbs. She almost bites her hand eating them. Like she doesn’t know how. “You like girls or what?”

He says “Ah”, letting a silence float. He holds his hand towards her, to make an exchange, create a bond. She gives her a cigarette and he sticks it between his lips. When she lights it, he coughs, but goes on smoking. “No.”

She nods silently. The tune stops, and they think they’ll never know where it came from. Maybe from their minds, who knows. They stare each other for a long time, like a challenge, but the girl turns away and sits on the couch. She put her still-burning cigarette in the ashtray. The boy goes to the gas stove, puts the kettle on one of the rings. He hazardously lights it with the matches he found. He burns four or them before managing just that, unexpecting of the sudden burst of flames.

Now there is something, something bothering him at the edge of his vision. He rubs his eye. Still there.

“you burnt your eyelids.”

He turns to her and smells his fingers. Yeah, it does smell like grilled pork. He’d rather burn his eyelids than his nostril hairs, for now the smell is not so bad or persistent. She takes her cigarette back, and since it’s out, comes dangerously close to the gas stove to light it again.

“I’m Ymir.”, It’s silent then. The boy goes back to fiddling with his top. The kettle whistles and if he forgets to take it off the fire, he remembers to answer : “Your name is weird.”

He has never heard that name. So he really doesn’t know her. He thought he did. She almost scream, her voice covering the kettle’s whistling.

“I’m weird too so it’s okay. I kinda like that name, yeah, I like Ys, you know.”

He goes to sit on the couch. The kettle whistles harder and harder.

“What’s yours?

— Eren.

— What?

— Eren.

— Your name too, it’s not normal.”

He ponders whether he should correct her, finally deciding that this does not hold the slightest importance. The persistent screaming of the kettle has him frowning again, but he can’t find it in him to move and stop it. He wonders if it will explode. But Ymir stops the fire and the noise in one move. He’s a bit disappointed. The girl looks at the kettle. She doesn’t know what to do with the hot water so she just pours it into the sink, fills the kettle again and puts it back on the stove, which she lights. There is a chance by the time the water boils again, she’ll have figured out what to do with it. She goes back to sit on the couch. We can hear the wind, and the rain. So there is a world outside of this room. The idea seems absurd. For an unknown reason, Eren shivers. The girl hands him a blanket which was lying under her butt.

“Here. It stinks but it’s warm.”

We understand that this, this room, must be something like her home. It’s probably not the first time she’s here. Eren, we don’t really know. He doesn’t really know either. He wonders if this holds any sort of importance. He wants to move. His body feels dull. He gets up to start stretching. He manages, sitting, to bend enough so his head touches his knees with his legs straight. He wonders if he practiced sport, before he was here. He wonders what might have existed, before he was here. If anything existed at all, in the first place.

He wraps himself in the blanket, and the kettle starts whistling. The whistling entangles with the sound of the wind being funneled into something, but it’s impossible to say if these are streets or corridors or caves or trees. Ymir removes the kettle from its place but doesn’t put the fire out. Instead, she puts out another cigarette and light it with the stove. She turns to Eren, who shrugs. From a shelf, she takes a glass, and pours water into it. The glass breaks, and she leaves it there. She puts out the fire and two mugs. She pours water into the first one and since it doesn’t break, fills the second one as well. She hands one to Eren, whose cold fingers accepted. He winces at the burning pain but takes the mug closer. He blows on the vape like a reflex from another world, grabs some crumbled chips from his pockets. He swallows some before holding out the rest to the girl, who ravages the palm of the hand with her tongue, with her teeth.

She looks at her mug of hot water, grabs it and sits again next to the boy. She wonders if they’re not trying to recreate something familiar, but nothing comes to her mind. The wind howls awfully and we hear something being slammed in the distance, like a window or a door or the ripped branch of a tree. We still ignore where they are. Eren feels his shivering starting to calm down. He brings his legs towards him and stretches one – the right one – above his head. He asks:

“Is it the end of the world?”, and it sounds like a revelation in his mouth. He likes the way these worlds feel on his palate. She puts out her cigarette stub in the ashtray.

“Something like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is absolutely welcome!  
> See you soon!


End file.
